Description

This conference proposes to look anew at issues concerning migration and Southeast Asia. Migrations have characterized Southeast Asian lives and livelihoods in different ways in different eras; they have affected work, settlement patterns, resource use, small and large investments, religion, and culture. Migrations have formed and changed the composition of Southeast Asian societies and given rise to complex cultural, social, environmental, and political problems and opportunities. Past and present, migrations have been both forced and voluntary: forced to make way for certain kinds of development; triggered by violence and war; but also intentional and, at times, pioneering: to change lives, secure new livelihoods, or explore new ecologies. Contributors to this conference will discuss continuities and changes in migration practices, patterns, and personnel, addressing a wide range of historical periods, disciplines, and themes.

(Schedule)

FRIDAY, APRIL 27
180 Doe Library

Registration

Welcome & Opening Remarks

Pheng Cheah, Professor of Rhetoric; Chair, Center for Southeast Asia Studies, UC Berkeley

Nancy Lee Peluso, Henry J. Vaux Distinguished Professor of Forest Policy, Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, College of Natural Resources; core faculty, Center for Southeast Asia Studies, UC Berkeley

Rachel Silvey, Professor of Geography; Richard Charles Lee Director, Asian Institute, University of Toronto

PANEL 1: Migrant Labor and the Law

Democracy and Indonesian Migrant Workers: Rising Political Salience and Contestation at Home and Abroad
Ann Marie Murphy, Seton Hall University

Development and Nation: The Evolution of Malaysian Immigration Laws
Oanh Nguyen, University of Minnesota

Absurd Journeys: The Costs of Becoming Legal
Maryann Bylander, Lewis & Clark College

Citizen, Refugee, Muslim?: A Preliminary Typology of Rohingya Migration and Membership Politics across Polities
Nabila Islam, McGill University

Break

PANEL 2: Repressive Labor and Forced Mobilities

Deportable Refugees, Transnationalism and Cambodian-Americans
Jennifer Zelnick, UC Irvine

From Sea to City: Migration and Social Wellbeing in Coastal Cambodia
Furqan Asif, University of Ottawa

Blood Bricks: Debt-bondage, Carceral Geographies and the (Im)mobile Lives of Brick-kiln Laborers in Cambodia
Katherine Brickell, Royal Holloway, University of London

Migration and Refuge in Central and East Java during the Violence of 1965-66
Siddharth Chandra, Michigan State University

Chair & Discussant: George Dutton, UCLA

Lunch Break

PANEL 3: Place-making and Networks

The Things They Carried (and Kept): Socialist Mobilities and Vietnamese Remittances from East Germany
Christina Schwenkel, UC Riverside

Urban Footprints: Migration, Place-making and the Politics of Presence in Hanoi, Vietnam
Timothy Karis, Western Oregon University

Tracing Mining Migration through Indonesia’s National Gold Networks
Matt Libassi, UC Berkeley

Labor Migration and Agrarian Change in Indonesia’s Industrial Rural Landscapes
Lisa Kelley, University of Hawaii-Manoa (co-authored with Nancy Peluso, UC Berkeley; Kim Carlson, University of Hawaii-Manoa; and Suraya Afiff, University of Indonesia)

Chair & Discussant: Emily Hertzman, Asian Institute, University of Toronto

Break

PANEL 4: Imaginaries and Transformations of Home

Flexible Filipinas: Global Economic Restructuring, Gendered Labor Migration and the Feminization of Overseas Work in Contemporary Philippine Anglophone Literature
Alden Sajor Wood, UC Irvine

Art and the Rantau: Tracking Minangkabau Migration
Katherine Bruhn, UC Berkeley

Migration and Da’wa: Exploring the Nexus in the Pen Circle Forum
Monika Arnez, University of Passau

‘Kisah Sukses’: Stories of Indonesian Migrant Worker Returnees Living in Greater Jakarta
Kilim Park, University of British Columbia

Chair & Discussant: Sylvia Tiwon, UC Berkeley

KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Migrant Worker Protection in ASEAN [tentative title]
Anis Hidayah, Migrant Care (Indonesia)

SATURDAY, APRIL 28
Morning session
180 Doe Library

Registration

PANEL 5: Brokering, Labor and Bodily Controls

The Policing of Female Marriage Migrants: Case Studies from Southeast Asia
Gwenola Ricordeau, CSU Chico

Unbound and Bound Spheres of Globalization: The Regional Pocket of Free Travel in Asia and Asymmetries in Global Mobility
Maria Cecilia Hwang, Rice University

Manufacturing Global Care Workers: Regimes of Labor Control in Indonesia’s Transnational Migrant Industry
Andy Chang, UC Berkeley

The Ethnic H-Rê Experiences: Labor Migration from Vietnam to Malaysia and Return
Angie Ngoc Tran, CSU Monterey Bay

Chair & Discussant: Catherine Ceniza Choy, UC Berkeley

Lunch Break

Afternoon session
Geballe Room
220 Stephens Hall, Townsend Center for the Humanities

Plenary Panel 1
Migration in Southeast Asia – Structural Shifts, Patterns and Continuities

Michele Ford (University of Sydney), Johan Lindquist (Stockholm University),
Aihwa Ong (UC Berkeley), Brenda Yeoh (National University of Singapore)

Moderator: Rachel Silvey, University of Toronto

Break
Plenary Panel 2
Political Ecology and Migration in Southeast Asia

Nicole Constable (University of Pittsburgh), Rebecca Elmhirst (University of Brighton),
Deirdre McKay (Keele University), Christine Padoch (NY Botanical Garden)

Moderator: Nancy Peluso, UC Berkeley